


How Red is the Setting Sun?

by triggerswaggiehavoc



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Urban Fantasy, Confusion, Fluffy Ending, Internal Conflict, M/M, it's certainly something, maybe a little soulmatey? idk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-26
Updated: 2016-08-26
Packaged: 2018-08-11 02:43:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,655
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7872997
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/triggerswaggiehavoc/pseuds/triggerswaggiehavoc
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Junhui can't help that there's so much he doesn't understand, and he can't hope to be understood. Jihoon can't count on anything.</p>
            </blockquote>





	How Red is the Setting Sun?

It’s terrifying. The way the house shakes with each deafening clap of thunder, seems like it’ll collapse at any moment and crush everyone inside. The way the rain beats angrily against the siding with vigor, desperate to break down the walls and get in, to flood the floors and destroy everything in sight. The way the lightning flashes in time with the ear-splitting booms and colors the sky a sickly purple, bolts flickering in long arcs that can never be far enough away from the window. It’s all terrifying, so terrifying how the whole world feels like it could be washed away in an instant, but Junhui isn’t terrified at all.

He’s never been terrified, and not because he’s brave. He’s never been _anything_ , and not because he’s heartless. He just can’t do it.

Ever since he was born, he hasn’t been able to feel a thing, neither emotionally nor physically. The only sensation that reaches him is the pressure when something touches him, but he can’t tell how strong the force is, and he can’t tell if it’s pleasant or painful. All he knows is that something is touching him and his nerves are working.

Not being able to sense pain has proven to be a problem. Pain says there’s something wrong. Since Junhui never knows if something is painful, he never knows if there’s anything wrong. When he was still a child, he once wondered for weeks why his arm couldn’t do the things it used to do, why it didn’t bend in quite the same way it had before. It wasn’t until his parents took him to the hospital that he learned his arm was something the doctor called broken, and it wasn’t until they’d wrapped the whole thing in stiff plaster and sent Junhui on his way that the doctor told his parents he was probably broken, too. Maybe hearing that should have upset him, but it didn’t.

They began making weekly visits to the doctor after that just in case, because they couldn’t for the life of them figure out how his arm had broken in the first place. Of course, Junhui hadn’t told them about the group of kids who’d pushed him down into the gravel on the playground at school when the teachers were preoccupied, how they’d pushed him down harder and called him a freak when he didn’t react. He didn’t know why he should have told them. The little scrapes and dents in his knees didn’t hurt, and neither did the words of the other kids. He didn’t know if they were meant to. As long as nothing was wrong, there was nothing to tell his parents about.

It was strange, the amount the other kids seemed to care about his inability to feel things. How they ostracized him because he never felt anything even though they knew he wouldn’t feel upset about being ostracized, how they hit him and beat him because he couldn’t feel it even though they knew he wouldn’t feel the pain of each blow. It didn’t make any sense for them to act the way they did, but Junhui couldn’t hate them for it because he didn’t know how.

Now that he’s an adult, he’s grown accustomed to being an outcast, though it hadn’t bothered him in the first place. At work, he is just another underling, sitting at a desk all day and continuing to type out memos even when his coworkers have already long gotten cramps in their fingers and aches in their spines. When he leaves work, he spends his time alone in his one-bedroom apartment, watching the news to fill up the time until he has to go to sleep. When he goes to sleep, he dreams of nothingness in shades of gray, and when he wakes up, he goes back to work. He still visits the doctor once a week only to be told that the only broken thing is him, and he still doesn’t feel anything when he hears it.

It’s only when he comes home to visit that he comes close to feeling anything. When there’s a storm raging outside like there is now and his little brother is trembling with fear and clinging to the family dog and his parents are rubbing his back to soothe him and telling him they love him and everything will be just fine, Junhui almost feels it at the back of his chest: a desire to feel things like everyone else does. Even if he does see people often complain about what they’re feeling, he figures it can’t be that bad if it’s something. If feeling things makes his parents smile in a way that he’s never been able to replicate by stretching his face in the mirror, it can’t be all bad. If feeling pain means feeling joy, he thinks he might want to deal with it.

“I think I want to know what it’s like to feel things,” he says to his doctor the next time he goes in. The doctor sits at a cold distance, surveying him from over the top of semicircular spectacles, and he arches a bushy eyebrow at the assertion.

“Do you?” he asks skeptically, and Junhui really isn’t sure anymore, but he nods anyway. “Well, of course you do. Anyone would, I think, who was in your predicament. I’m surprised you’ve taken so long to mention it.” And there’s that reminder that he’s not fully functional, that insinuation that he’s somehow less than everyone else, that he’s broken. It still doesn’t bother him. He wonders if someday it will.

“Unfortunately,” the doctor coughs into his fist, gravelly and tense, “I don’t know how to help you with that. With an affliction as rare as yours, there’s nothing I can do but make sure you don’t get hurt. Physically,” he tacks on, as if there is any other way Junhui could be hurt. “You’ll have to figure it out on your own.” As Junhui trudges out of the office and back home, he knows the doctor isn’t particularly interested in helping him, but he still can’t find it in himself to be bothered.

Figuring it out on his own isn’t what Junhui thought it would be, though he isn’t exactly sure what he thought it would be, either. What he does know is that it’s not easy to find other people who have never felt anything with no map to guide him there. Maybe it’s because there is nobody else. Even so, he doesn’t give up; he searches the internet for anything that will tell him something, and when he doesn’t find a clue, he just keeps looking. After all, he’s never been known to feel discouraged.

After a few weeks, it becomes apparent that he’s not really making any progress, so he figures he ought to cast out a line himself rather than keep seeking out someone else’s. He starts a blog.

He doesn’t know what kind of posts to make on it. He looks at some other blogs for reference, but they either have nothing to do with the message he needs to get out or are the exact opposite of him, overflowing with emotion over something great or terrible or unbelievable that’s happened to the author. Doing something, he realizes, is very difficult when there is nothing to tell you how, but he keeps trying anyway. Once he’s mulled it over for a long time, he makes an introductory post on his blog.

“Hello,” it reads. “My name is Junhui. I am 23 years old. I am much like most other 23 year old men I know in that I live in an apartment by myself and work an office job. However, there is one thing that makes me different from a lot of my peers: I can’t feel anything. Ever since I can remember, I have never been able to feel anything, neither emotionally nor physically. I make routine visits to the doctor just to make sure I’m still healthy (since I can’t feel pain to know if something’s wrong), but the doctors don’t know what’s wrong with me or why I’m like this. I think I want to know what it’s like to feel things, though, so I’m looking for someone who thinks they may be able to help. If you think you know how to help me, please send me a message. Thank you.”

Once it’s posted, he doesn’t know what else to do but wait, though he hasn’t the faintest clue how to get it to spread so others might find it.  Occasionally, he posts updates stating he’s still in search of someone who might help him, but he sees no response for a while, just a quiet wall of silence fostered by lack of exposure. One day, though, he gets home from work to see that he’s received a response.

“Fuck you,” it reads plainly, text screaming dully at him from the too-bright screen. “I would give anything to never have to feel pain again. You have no idea how lucky you are.” And that is where it ends. Junhui stares at the message until the sun sets and the room darkens and the words don’t mean anything.

“I don’t feel lucky,” he wants to respond. “I feel empty.” But he guesses there’s no point in saying that, so he shuts his computer off and turns on the news.

More responses come after a few more days, and Junhui figures someone must have shared his blog, though he doesn’t know whether it was done in the spirit of helping him or with the bitter feelings of the first person who responded. Either way, he thinks receiving messages at all is progress, even if many of them are as unhelpful as the first.

“What’s wrong with you?” most of them say. Junhui wants to tell them he doesn’t know and that’s what he’s trying to figure out, too, but that’s never all they have to say. “I wish I didn’t have to feel anything. Life would be so much easier.” Junhui can never understand them. “You’re so lucky and you don’t appreciate it at all. You’re so ungrateful.” Junhui doesn’t think he’s ungrateful, but he lets them say what they want anyway. “You should be ashamed of yourself,” they sometimes say, and it’s useless for him to point out that he can’t be.

Eventually, though, he does receive a message from someone whose intent isn’t to berate. “Hi,” the message begins, "I don’t know if you’ve found anyone yet who can help you, and I don’t know if this message will mean anything to you, but I know someone who has a problem that is kind of similar to yours, I think.” Junhui doesn’t know if it will help at all to talk to someone who knows someone who has a problem that might be similar, but that doesn’t stop him from typing his reply rapidly and sending it straightaway.

“Thank you for contacting me,” it says. “I haven’t found anyone yet, and I would appreciate if you could tell me more about this person you know or put me in contact with them.”

“Where do you live?” the person asks. “I think it’ll be better if we can meet in person.” Junhui has always heard that it’s unsafe to answer a question like that from someone you don’t know, but he does it anyway, because he doesn’t know when else he’ll have the chance to learn something.

The person who contacted him lives surprisingly close, only a short ride across the city by subway, and they agree to meet somewhere in the middle, at a small restaurant with lots of windows that have pretty plants hanging in them. Junhui arrives quite a bit early without meaning to, and while he sits on a bench and waits for his company to arrive, he looks at the flowers on the vines spilling out of the hanging baskets, small and white and delicate, tiny petals sitting in clustered trails against the green. He thinks that if he could, he might really feel something when he looks at them, but all he feels now is that they look nice.

“Are you Junhui?” a bubbly voice says suddenly from somewhere up above his seat, and Junhui turns his head to find a puffy-cheeked and very nice looking young man wearing a cheerful, albeit quite nervous, smile.

“I am,” Junhui says, bobbing his head up and down. He contemplates trying to put on a friendly smile in greeting, but when he remembers how scary everyone had said it was when he tried once before, he abandons the notion and instead stands to offer a handshake. The pressure of the other man’s hand on his is the same as the pressure of everything else he feels, but he can tell by the way his fingers are tensed that he’s gripping Junhui’s hand with all his might.

“Wow, you’re so tall!” he gushes, eyes wide and sparkly. He lets go of Junhui’s hand hesitantly and wipes his palm on the front of his trousers before clasping it back in his own again. “I’m Soonyoung, by the way. It’s nice to meet you!”

“Nice to meet you, too, Soonyoung,” Junhui says. He can’t discern the reason behind the abrupt bout of chuckles that bursts forth from Soonyoung’s lips at the statement.

“Sorry,” he says once he’s gotten the laughter out of his system, shifting his eyes over Junhui’s face in search of something he doesn’t appear to find. “You really weren’t kidding around. Your voice is so flat, it’s like I’m talking to a machine.” Junhui opens his mouth to explain, but Soonyoung cuts him off by way of continuing to talk. “Not that that’s necessarily a bad thing,” he says, then drops Junhui’s hand to walk over to speak with a hostess.

Junhui watches him converse with her, all wide smiles and emphatic gestures, and thinks that he’s unusually expressive, even from the standpoint of an average person. The way he throws his body into his words is the strangest thing Junhui has ever seen, but he thinks there’s something beautiful about it, too, something enviable about having so much to show when speaking. Junhui wonders if someday he could be like that as well.

The hostess guides them to a window table that’s just been wiped down and gestures for them to take a seat with a charming grin. As they wait for a server to come take their drink orders, Junhui keeps his eyes on the hanging plants again. The flowers on this side of the restaurant are dusty purple instead of white and slightly larger than those on the opposite side, at times drowning out the underlying green completely. Junhui traces their petals with his eyes carefully, imagining how soft they might be or what they might feel like if he were able to touch them and feel them the same way everyone else can. When he turns to ask for a water from the server who’s suddenly appeared, he finds Soonyoung’s gaze fixed intently on him.

“What is it?” he asks once the waiter leaves to fetch their beverages. A thin smile stretches across Soonyoung’s face as he nods his head affirmatively, though Junhui isn’t certain to what.

“You must really like flowers,” he comments. Junhui doesn’t bother to point out that he doesn’t know how to like anything. “You haven’t stopped looking at them since we sat down.”

“I think they’re quite pretty.”

“I thought you couldn’t feel anything?” His voice overflows with confusion, and his face displays it plainly as well. Junhui tries to think of how to explain the disconnect between understanding that something is beautiful and feeling an emotional pull that makes you think so when you look at it, but nothing comes to him.

“I can’t,” he agrees at length, “but the flowers still look nice.”

“I don’t really think I understand, but I believe you, I guess. And I agree that the flowers look nice.” He flicks the rolled up silverware side to side over the table, maintaining his stare all the while. Junhui wonders whether he’s trying in vain to make him uncomfortable—he’s heard being stared at often makes people very uncomfortable—or he’s just interested in looking at him. “You’re very handsome, you know,” he says after a long pause. “I think you’d be even more handsome if you tried smiling.”

“Thank you,” Junhui says, “but I’ve been told it’s scary when I try to make myself smile, so I don’t do it.”

“Well, you should try right now, and I’ll tell you if it’s scary.” Junhui contorts his face into what he thinks a smile is supposed to look like, but he can’t tell if he’s succeeding without a mirror. Soonyoung’s wide eyes inform him that he hasn’t done a very good job. “Yeah, that’s a little scary,” he admits, “but it’s okay. We can work on it.”

Junhui realizes suddenly that it’s been an extremely long time since he’s had a normal conversation like this with anyone; in fact, he can’t recall if he ever has before. When people find out that he isn’t quite how they expected him to be, that he’s a little broken, they typically distance themselves and break off contact, leave him alone since he can’t get lonely. Junhui thinks listening to the sound of someone else’s voice for a while isn’t bad at all.

“Anyway,” Soonyoung says a good half an hour later as he takes a hefty bite of his sandwich, “we’re here to talk about my friend.” He’d spent the entire meeting thus far making small talk about the good weather they’ve been having lately and the abominable number of potholes littering the roadways; Junhui wasn’t getting annoyed, of course, but he had started to wonder when they would broach the issue which prompted their meeting. “Well, I guess he probably wouldn’t say we’re friends,” Soonyoung continues, “but I say we are.”

“You said he has a problem similar to mine, correct?”

“I did say that,” Soonyoung muses quietly, chewing at his bottom lip. It starts to get red, and Junhui wonders if it hurts. “I mean, that’s not entirely false, but it’s not really true, either.”

“What do you mean?”

“His problem is kind of… the opposite of yours, I guess?”

“The opposite of mine?” Junhui blinks a few times slowly, trying to understand. “Wouldn’t that be normal?” Soonyoung chuckles, but there’s no humor in it.

“You should probably just come meet him yourself,” he says, and once the bill is paid, they leave.

The apartment building they head to is just a few stops away by subway in the direction Soonyoung lives. It’s a short brick building with ivy vines crawling up at the corners and dusty-looking windows, but Soonyoung promises it’s really a very nice place even if it looks old and shoddy. The middle-aged woman sweeping the lobby gives a cheerful wave when they enter, quirking a brow when Junhui only nods to her blankly, and Soonyoung leads the way up three flights of stairs until they’ve reached the top floor. They follow a hallway all the way until its end, where they reach a wooden door that doesn’t look like it fits its frame as well as it should. Soonyoung pulls a dull brass key out of his pocket and immediately commences unlocking the door, pushing it open with a soft creak once he has succeeded.

“Jihoon,” Soonyoung singsongs, stepping warily onto the carpet in the room, “I brought a guest who wants to meet you.”

“A guest?” an angry voice barks from inside, then grunts a single laugh completely devoid of mirth. “Nobody wants to meet me.”

“That can’t be true, because I have someone here who wants to meet you,” Soonyoung argues playfully, gesturing for Junhui to enter.

When he rounds the corner into the apartment, his eyes meet a room that looks much more spacious than it is in actuality due to being largely empty. The room is almost cavernous in its absence of furnishings, the only decorations an empty coffee table pushed up against the left wall between two doors and an ancient-looking recliner resting near the far wall, front facing an open window. As they continue toward the chair, it becomes apparent to Junhui that there is someone seated in it, the top of a blonde head just visible from over the back when they’re close enough.

“Here he is!” Soonyoung cheers excitedly once they’ve reached the back of the room, tugging Junhui in front of the chair with one hand and excitedly wiggling the fingers of the other.

“Are you Jihoon?” Junhui asks, because the voice he heard in the doorway and the person he sees in the chair do not match up. The voice he’d heard was gruff and violent, but the face of the young man seated before him is graceful and almost passive, decorated by elegant features that curve prettily into a charming face. When he gazes up at Junhui from under a sweep of lovely eyelashes, he’s almost certain his heart might have beat a little faster if it only knew how.

“Of course I am,” he grumbles, and suddenly the voice and face are connecting much better. “I’m the only one here.” He narrows his eyes suspiciously, flicking them over Junhui’s face. “Why do you want to meet me?”

“Soonyoung told me—”

“What did you tell him, Soonyoung?” Jihoon snaps suddenly, pivoting his head so his stern eyes come to rest on the tentatively smiling mug opposite him. It’s at this moment that Junhui notices how fiercely his hands clutch the armrests, long fingernails digging mercilessly into the upholstery. His hands are shaking with the force of his grip, and now that Junhui’s noticed it, most of him isn’t as still as it first appeared. His arms tremble with tenseness, knees bounce up and down frantically, heels tap impatiently behind the balls of his feet that are driven so firmly into the carpet it seems the floor might break.

“First, listen,” Soonyoung begins cautiously, wetting his lips. “This is Junhui, and he has a problem that’s a lot like yours.”

“A lot like mine?” Jihoon spits skeptically.

“The opposite of yours,” Junhui clarifies, though he doesn’t know exactly what he’s clarifying.

“The _opposite_ of mine?” He draws his eyebrows together in a firm line. “Soonyoung—”

“Just _listen_ , please,” he juts in hurriedly, sending Junhui a sideways look before continuing. “He’s got a problem that’s a lot like yours, but in the opposite direction. He can’t feel anything.”

“The opposite direction?” Junhui starts to inquire for more detail, but Jihoon drowns him out with a substantial huff.

“Can’t feel anything?” he hisses through his teeth, eyes darting between the pair standing before him. “What, so you came to rub it in my face? Came to make me feel worse than I already do all the time?” He diverts his attention back to Soonyoung with a scowl, arms trembling more forcefully. “And you still think you’re going to help somehow. You think bundling us together like circus freaks is going to do anything?”

“I don’t understand,” Junhui interjects, and Jihoon whips his gaze back. Soonyoung sends him a sympathetic glance.

“Of course you don’t understand,” he shoots. “You could never understand. You don’t feel anything. I feel _everything_.”

“Everything?”

“Yes. Everything.” He squeezes his eyes shut tightly as he continues speaking. “As in every single emotional or physical _anything_ that happens to anyone at all on this globe. Do you know what that means?”

“No,” Junhui confesses.

“I figured. I’ll tell you what it means.” His fingers press more insistently into the arms of the chair, denting them beyond hope of return to normalcy. “It means that every bone that breaks today will be mine and every person that dies today will be someone I love and every house that burns down will be my home and every single bullet fired at another person will pierce my skin. And yes, maybe every wedding is mine and every child born means the whole world to me, and maybe my chest overflows with all the love in the world all the time, but that can never hold a candle to all the funerals and hospital visits. I am wrapped in a thousand hugs and stabbed by a thousand knives at the same time every single goddamn day, and nobody can understand what that’s like, especially not you.” He expels a shaky breath, hold on the chair unrelenting. “You did not want to meet me because nobody ever wants to meet this, and I don’t want to see you again. I want both of you to leave.”

Junhui has hardly processed everything before Soonyoung is shoving him back across the flattened carpet and into the hallway. He shuts the door behind himself swiftly, eyes cast to the floor as Junhui just stares at him. Eventually, he looks up to meet his eyes and breathes out slowly.

“I’m sorry about that,” he says softly. “I didn’t think it would go that badly.”

“It’s okay,” Junhui assures him. “I don’t mind.”

“Yeah, I guess you don’t.” Soonyoung wheezes out a dry laugh. Before continuing, he digs a hand into his pocket and fishes out the key he’d used to open the door earlier. “I want you to take this,” he says, pressing it into Junhui’s palm.

“But Jihoon said he doesn’t want to see me again.” He tries to dump it back into Soonyoung’s grasp, but his hands are already shoved deep into his pockets, so Junhui just holds the key out to the open air. “I don’t need this. You need to keep it.”

“I know he said he doesn’t want to see you, but I think you two can help each other, somehow.” He fixes his eyes on the ceiling, and they look more watery than usual. “He’s been like this ever since we were kids, you know, and I want to help him, but I don’t know how. And I think you might be able to. He just doesn’t want to force people to be around him, I think, but he needs somebody to be around him if they’re going to help.”

“Why doesn’t he want people to be around him?” Junhui has always figured that having someone to talk to might help, but then again, he doesn’t really know what would help.

“Because he’s so mean,” Soonyoung says as if it doesn’t need to be explained. “You heard the way he yelled at you.” Junhui mulls this over for a second.

“I think he’s not so bad,” he says finally. Soonyoung smiles, wide and genuine.

“That’s why you need to have the key.”

The next day, Junhui comes by after work, lingering on the subway car until it reaches the stop he remembers disembarking from previously. The building looks somehow different when he approaches it than it did the day before, trails of ivy somehow greener and taller than he remembers, but he doesn’t know why he thinks so. The woman who had been sweeping the lobby before now sits in an office beside the staircase, and she eyes Junhui curiously over the top of a newspaper as he ascends. When he arrives at Jihoon’s door, he tries to open it as quietly and surreptitiously as possible, easing it open noiselessly and stepping inside. By the lack of Jihoon yelling anything, it seems he hasn’t disturbed him.

He finds the room as barren and vacuous as it had been the previous day, and as he crosses toward the chair, he sees that Jihoon is still seated upon it, gripping its arms with the fullest force he can muster. He’s still wearing the same clothes, too, a loose gray sweater and worn black shorts, and Junhui wonders if he’s been wearing them for a very long time. Jihoon doesn’t seem to notice him when he gets closer, eyes fixed blankly on the open window, so he sits down on the floor and watches him, unsure of what else to do.

Second inspection reminds him just how nice Jihoon’s features are. He reminds him vaguely of the small white flowers of the potted plant at the restaurant where he’d met Soonyoung, though not so delicate. The sunlight streaming in falls on his face in lines and a sudden breeze rustles his hair, and Junhui thinks he’s seeing more happen right now than he’s ever seen in his life when tears start to fall from Jihoon’s eyes undammed.

They stream down his face in excess, sliding cleanly onto his neck, but his visage remains stoic, completely oblivious to their presence. Junhui doesn’t think he’s ever seen someone cry like this, like they haven’t got a clue it’s happening, and he watches as the tears continue to roll until they’ve soaked into the neck of Jihoon’s sweater. After a long while, Jihoon blinks, and his eyes look like they’re really seeing now; it doesn’t take long for them to fall on Junhui.

“I told you I didn’t want to see you again,” he points out roughly, though his voice sounds tired and strained and slightly hoarse. Neither of his hands makes any move to wipe away the wetness still shining on his cheeks.

“I know,” Junhui says, “but I want to apologize.”

“Bullshit,” Jihoon growls. “You don’t feel remorse. You don’t want to apologize.”

“Maybe,” he concedes. “But I didn’t mean to make you feel worse than you already do. I didn’t know.”

“Just because you didn’t mean to doesn’t mean you didn’t.”

“I know.” Jihoon glares back suspiciously, face still damp.

“Fine. I accept your apology.” He leans back further into the chair, but he doesn’t seem any more relaxed. “You can leave now, and don’t come back.”

“I’ll leave now if you want me to,” Junhui agrees, “but I think I’ll probably come back. Sorry.” A dry half-smile cracks one side of Jihoon’s face for just a fleeting fraction of a second before it drops back to neutrality.

“Don’t apologize if you don’t mean it.” He remains silent for a few seconds before adding, “I don’t know why you would want to come back.”

“Soonyoung thinks we can help each other, and I think maybe he’s right.” Jihoon scoffs.

“Soonyoung doesn’t know anything.” When he says nothing more, Junhui takes it as his cue to leave.

“Is there anything you need before I go?” he asks, but Jihoon only snorts.

“There is nothing I need that you can give me.” Junhui wonders if he’s right.

The next day when he comes by, he finds Jihoon still sitting in the same spot, still wearing the same outfit, still staring out the window. Today, though, he notices when Junhui enters, lets his eyes follow him as he assumes his seat on the floor again. “You’re back,” he notes, and Junhui nods his head wordlessly as Jihoon turns his attention back to the world beyond the window, though his eyes don’t seem to be seeing anything out there.

“You cried yesterday,” Junhui points out after a lengthy silence, suddenly remembering. “Why?”

“I told you already I feel everything,” Jihoon reminds him impatiently. “I guess you wouldn’t know, but that happens sometimes when people get overwhelmed. Yesterday was a bad day.”

“Is today a good day? You seem less upset.” Junhui only says it because it’s true; even if he still holds onto the arms of the chair and drives his feet into the carpet like he’ll die if he relents, he’s visibly less tense, eyes less hard and face less strained.

“There are no good days,” he says wistfully, “but after all these years, I can handle days like today.”

Junhui continues observing him, noting the way the occasional breezes stir loose strands of hair and rustle the ends of his sleeves, the way shadows slide across his face with the gradual sinking of the sun. His mouth rests permanently in a frown, lips pressed tightly together to reveal pronounced dimples on either side. It’s hard to remember that he’s being torn apart inside when he looks so placid.

“Soonyoung says you’re mean,” Junhui tells him when shades of red start to lose their saturation, and Jihoon’s eyebrows twitch.

“He’s right.”

“I don’t think so.” Jihoon looks really skeptical now, both eyebrows arching slightly higher than usual.

“Why?” he inquires. “I’ve given you no reason not to think so.”

“I don’t know,” Junhui admits with a shrug. “I just don’t think you are.” Jihoon rolls his eyes.

“I guess you wouldn’t be able to tell anyway.” His eyes flit to the window again. “It’s getting dark. Go home.” So Junhui leaves.

He keeps coming back every day after that, and every day Jihoon asks him why. Every day, Junhui tells him it’s because he thinks Soonyoung is right, and every day Jihoon scoffs at this response. Jihoon seems to have fewer bad days after that, a lot more days he can handle, and Junhui sits on the floor and talks to him for as long as Jihoon will respond. It’s never for long at all, but sometimes, he almost forgets. How very different they are, how broken. He almost tricks himself into thinking things are normal and they’re just acquaintances making small talk.

“You know,” Jihoon says one day as Junhui sits before him, “aside from Soonyoung, no one has ever come to see me as many times as you have.” He still wears the same clothing Junhui first saw him in. He wonders for the second time if he’s been wearing it for very long.

“Other people used to visit you?”

“Yeah. Therapists and things,” he grumbles, exhaling. “Soonyoung’s idea. But they all stopped coming when he stopped making them.”

“Why?”

“They never wanted to come in the first place,” he says, and Junhui recalls the first words he heard Jihoon say. “None of them. And I used to have a lot more bad days then than I’ve had since you started coming. I don’t blame them for not coming back.”

“They should have come back,” Junhui insists. Even if Jihoon hadn’t been the most pleasant to be around, he thinks he still deserved to have someone there, someone to talk to, to make him feel less alien.

“No they shouldn’t have,” Jihoon argues. “Not everyone is thick-skinned and forgiving like you are, you know.” It’s a strange thing, hearing his fatal flaw framed like a virtue. “I was awful to them. I can admit that. Nobody should have to deal with something so ugly.” Junhui isn’t sure if he’s referring to himself or the way he treated his past visitors, but he feels it’s wrong either way.

“I think you’re very beautiful,” he says plainly after a moment of consideration, and Jihoon’s eyes widen by just enough to be noticeable.

“Excuse me?”

“I don’t think you’re ugly at all,” he clarifies. “I think you’re beautiful.” Jihoon’s mouth twists into the closest semblance of a smile Junhui’s ever seen it do and he exhales a heavy breath.

“I think you better head home.”

“But I haven’t been here very long. It’s still light outside.”

“I know, but I think you ought to go.” He twists his eyes back to the far-off clouds outside the window. “I’ll be fine, so you can leave.”

“If you’re sure,” Junhui says. Jihoon nods, so he stands and starts walking toward the door. “Is there anything you need before I go?”

“No, you can leave. Thank you.” Junhui doesn’t remember the last time someone thanked him for anything, and he isn’t quite sure what he’s being thanked for now, but he decides not to ask.

Everything seems like usual when Junhui arrives the next afternoon, but it quickly becomes apparent that today is not one of the days Jihoon can handle. His entire body is quaking when Junhui sits down in front of him, eyes vacant and unmoving, tears streaming unbridled from his eyes. His back is hunched in tension, and Junhui can hear creaking and snapping in the wood of the arms of the chair as his fingers plunge into them, clasping as tightly as they can possibly manage. His breath comes in ragged spurts, hitching around the dull beginnings of screams. Junhui doesn’t know what to do but watch, so that’s all he does for a while, until long shadows are stretching themselves across the back of the room with the sun’s retreat and Jihoon’s attention finally snaps back into him.

“You again,” he growls almost immediately, a scowl deeply impressed on his features. “Where the hell is Soonyoung?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, find out,” he spits. “I need his help.”

“What do you need? I can help you.”

“No, you _can’t_.”

“Yes, I can, and I’m already here. Just tell me—”

“ _No,_ ” he howls. “Soonyoung is my friend, not you, and _he_ has to do it because he—” A shrill and gargling cry tears out of his throat, splitting his sentence in the middle, but once he’s finished screaming, he picks back up like nothing happened. “He’s always done it. He’s the only one who ever takes care of me and he’s not here. _Where is he?_ ” His eyes squeeze closed against the pain, toes crushing into the carpet and straight through to the floorboards. “I’m tired of these fucking clothes and this fucking chair, I just want to… to—” He cuts himself off by choking on a sob, eyes still glued shut as he tries to swallow it down.

“I can take care of you if you tell me what to do. Do you want a change of clothes?” He reaches forward until his fingers brush against the fabric of the drab sleeve, and Jihoon’s eyes snap back open frantically.

“Don’t touch me!” he shrieks, and his hand leaves the arm of the chair for the first time Junhui’s ever seen to wrap around his wrist and stop him from coming any closer.

“Ouch,” he yelps instinctively. The grip around his wrist is far too tight, uncomfortably so, and heat is oozing out of Jihoon’s fingertips, searing into his skin. He’s so shocked by the pain that it takes him a moment to realize he’s feeling it, that there’s more than just a generic pressure on his wrist. He swings his arm roughly to shake Jihoon’s hand off, and it floods with relief instantly. “That _hurt_.”

“It did?” Jihoon eyes him blankly, jaw slightly slack, then looks at his own hand. He peels the other one from where it still sits on the chair, leaving a crescent of dents behind, and looks at both of them, turning them over and around under his scrutiny, clenching and unclenching his fists, stretching and wiggling his fingers uncertainly. When he meets Junhui’s eyes again, he looks lost.

“Jihoon, do that again.”

“Again?” he inquires unsurely, but doesn’t hesitate to extend an arm and encase Junhui’s wrist in his fingers once more. This time, there’s no force; his fingertips gently rest against Junhui’s skin, emanating the same warmth, palm flat and hot against the back of his arm.

“Ouch,” he says again.

“Does that hurt?”

“I don’t know,” Junhui admits, “but it feels like something.” Jihoon lets his grip slacken and fall from Junhui’s wrist, flops back onto the chair with a heavy thud. He stares at the ceiling and pulls his knees up to his chest, razed impressions in the floor marking where his feet just sat.

“Junhui,” he says at last, ripping his focus from the popcorn. “I don’t feel a thing.”

“You don’t?” Junhui’s heart immediately picks up speed, but he doesn’t know why. There’s something unidentifiable wrenching his gut, telling him he’s done something wrong, and for the first time in his life, he feels the contents of his stomach churning. “Oh my god, I’m so sorry, I must have—”

“No, not like you,” Jihoon interjects. “I feel some things.” Junhui exhales, the crushing weight lifting from his chest in an instant. He’s overwhelmed by how warm it feels even though nothing is touching him. “But I think the only things I’m feeling are _me_ things.” He rolls his neck back and forth stiffly, eyelids fluttering shut, and Junhui’s heart makes a small leap that he can’t interpret. “Can you still feel things now that I’m not touching you?”

“I think so,” Junhui says with a shrug. He kicks his foot out and slams it into the leg of Jihoon’s recliner without hesitation, then is immediately greeted by a mind-numbing pain that shoots straight up his leg. He pulls his throbbing foot back to himself as a few hot tears gather at the corners of his eyes and slip down his cheeks. “Yes,” he squeaks.

Without warning, Jihoon bursts into peals of ringing laughter, musical and vibrant. His body shakes with it, turning him over until his head dangles over the side of the seat, and Junhui’s chest is telling him this is the most wonderful sound he’s ever heard. “You’re an idiot,” he breathes between giggles, gasping desperately for air. “Why would you kick the chair?”

“I didn’t know what else to do,” Junhui defends. He can feel heat rising to his face, but he doesn’t understand why. Maybe it’s a side effect of the pain in his leg. As Jihoon continues laughing, Junhui feels laughter rising in himself as well, bubbling out of his stomach and up behind his ribs until it’s sounding through the nearly-empty room, loud and clear and unusual. He laughs until his stomach and face are both sore and aching, a foreign rush making his heart hammer in overtime, and he wonders if this is part of the pain people wish they could get rid of and why they would ever want to.

“You’re unbelievable,” Jihoon tells him breathlessly after they’ve tired themselves out. He heaves himself up from the chair only to nearly fall off his feet with a groan, clutching at his head with both hands.

“Is something wrong?” Junhui asks, heartrate sharpening in a way that makes it hurt more, a much worse kind of hurt than before.

“I don’t know,” Jihoon mutters, lowering himself to the ground. “My whole body is sore. I think I might be hungry.”

Junhui’s already on his feet when he says, “Let’s go get something to eat.” Jihoon’s lips spread into a thin smile that curves up prettily at the corners.

“Let me change first.”

The closest place Junhui knows is the restaurant where he met Soonyoung, so that’s where they go. The pole in the subway starts to hurt his hand after holding onto it for too long, and he laughs, because he never used to understand why people switch hands so much. Jihoon sits on a seat just before him as they ride, and Junhui can’t help but glance at him every few seconds unintentionally. He’s changed into a different pair of shorts and a crisp t-shirt, and his eyes droop closed despite the rattling of the car over the rails in a way that makes Junhui’s head feel fuzzy, but before he can get to the bottom of why, their stop has arrived.

The restaurant is very much the same as Junhui remembers it, hanging pots overflowing with delicate bunches of blooms that rustle in the breeze. The hostess seats them on the side with the white flowers, and when Junhui looks at them, he thinks he loves them, even if he doesn’t know quite what that means. Jihoon eyes him carefully from across the table when he finally rends his gaze from the hanging pot.

“You must really like flowers,” he notes. Junhui chuckles at the familiarity of the observation.

“I guess I do,” he says. “I think they’re very pretty.”

“You know, Junhui,” Jihoon begins with a solemn nod of his head, “you have a very nice smile now that you’re wearing one.”

“Do I?” he asks, feeling his facial muscles stretch a little more. “Am I smiling right now?” Jihoon nods, and his face splits into a wide smile when he does, a charming set of teeth revealing itself as his eyes crinkle. The flowers suddenly don’t seem quite as captivating; Junhui can’t pinpoint why he doesn’t look at them again for the rest of the meal.

When they rise to leave, Jihoon stumbles again, exhaling forcefully as he grips onto the table to maintain his balance. “I’m really tired,” he groans. “I think I might fall asleep.”

“We’re going home now, so try to stay awake.” Jihoon nods, but he looks like he could fall into a dream at any moment, so Junhui pulls him along as quickly as he can.

In his haste, he accidentally leads them onto the subway heading in the direction of his house instead of Jihoon’s, and when he sees Jihoon’s head dipped fully forward on the seat, body limp, he understands that he did not have the temporal luxury to make that mistake. As the stops click by, he rationalizes the error by telling himself that he doesn’t know where there’s a bed in Jihoon’s apartment anyway and it’ll be easier to drag him into the complex elevator than up a few flights of stairs.

He’s panting by the time he gets the door unlocked, the weight of Jihoon’s entire body resting on his shoulder barely bearable, but he manages somehow to haul him in and dump him on his bed. When he finally sits down on the couch, he’s exhausted. He doesn’t like the way it feels, but he does like feeling it, and it’s only now that it occurs to him he should tell his family what’s happened.

“Junhui?” His mom’s voice sounds weary, and hearing it makes his chest tighten in an unfamiliar way. “Is something wrong?”

“I’m tired,” he says, and she doesn’t say anything. “I hit my foot on a chair earlier and it still hurts.” He listens for words from the other end of the line, but they don’t come, only shaky breathing and weighted silence. “Mom?”

“Are you telling the truth?” He can hear her sobbing, and he’s about to cry, too.

“I am.” His voice cracks in the middle of the second syllable and neither of them can ignore it.

“How?” is all his mother manages to croak out between cries.

“I met a,” he thinks long and hard to find the right word, “friend,” and it doesn’t feel like the right word, but he’s already said it, “and he helped me. I can’t really explain how it worked, but I can feel things now. I really can.”

“I’m so glad for you, honey,” she cries. “So glad. Can you come visit soon?”

“I can come this weekend.”

“Then I’ll see you then. I love you.”

“I love you, too,” Junhui says, and for the first time, he knows that he means it.

He wakes up the next morning with a crick in his back from sleeping on the too-short couch, head groggy and pounding from resting in the joint between the arm and the cushions. There’s an ache in his neck that just won’t quit, and as much as he’s glad he can feel it, he really wishes it would go away. He’s in the middle of wondering how many other times his neck should have been hurting like this in the past when he enters his bedroom and is met with a body sprawled across his bed, still fast asleep.

Jihoon looks otherworldly, like some seraph deposited atop the mattress in the dead of night by god himself. His hair falls in a slight curl around his peaceful face, light falling across it in stripes from between the blinds. As Junhui watches his chest rise and fall evenly, he can’t think of a way to describe what he’s feeling other than pink, inside and out. It’s like something inside him is moving and he likes where it’s going, likes the way his heart beats faster and everything in the room seems to glow. He wonders if it’s got nothing to do with Jihoon or everything to do with him, and he figures it’s got to be one or the other, but there’s not enough time for him to get it sorted out before he has to go to work.

The hours do not pass the same, Junhui finds, when your body passes with them. His fingers grow stiff long before it’s time to return home, and he thinks he can feel every separate vertebrae in his spine as they tense, but he can’t keep himself from smiling despite it. He doesn’t fail to notice the bitter looks his coworkers shoot him from their desks, but he doesn’t pay them any mind, because for once in his life, they’re the ones who could never understand.

When he walks in the door to his apartment, he’s briefly surprised to see the television already on and running the news, but a small figure hunched over on his couch reminds him he’d brought Jihoon home previously. The moment of shock stings right behind his ribs, and it only keeps burning when Jihoon turns around to offer a smile.

“How was work?” he asks.

“Different,” Junhui tells him, and he feels his lips sliding into a crescent. “My back hurts.” Jihoon laughs dryly and turns his attention back to the screen. “Are you hungry?”

“Maybe. I haven’t been awake very long. Is this your apartment?”

“Who else’s would it be?”

“Well, mine, ideally,” he huffs. “You have no idea how confused I was when I woke up.”

“Sorry,” Junhui says, easing his weight onto the couch. “I accidentally took us on the wrong train.”

“It’s fine,” he promises, “but you will have to tell me how to get home.”

“It’s not difficult. I can take you back.”

“Okay.”

They fall into a silence after that, both fixing their attention on the TV. It’s only relaxing until the reporter really starts talking and everything that comes out of his mouth is terrible. A gunman walking into a school, a child abandoned by careless parents, a trusted executive embezzling millions from his own unknowing employees. It’s enough to set his blood boiling immediately, knuckles going white as he clenches his fists.

“Hey, Jihoon,” he begins tensely, “why do I feel so…” He gropes around in his mind for the right word, but all he returns with is, “red?” Jihoon hums, and the vibration seems to resonate dead in the center of Junhui’s chest.

“You’re just angry,” he says, “because everything that happened is bad. That’s how everyone feels when they watch the news.” He releases a single mirthless chuckle. “I ought to know.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize.” He pauses for just a moment before continuing. “You know, that’s how you would have felt if you’d come to visit me when all the therapists and everyone did. That was how they all felt. That’s why they didn’t come back.”

“I think I still would have come back.”

“You’re lying,” Jihoon accuses, but Junhui shakes his head. “There’s no way you would have.”

“I think I would have,” he insists, and Jihoon turns to face him now, eyes locked on each other. “I don’t feel that way when I look at you.”

“How do you feel when you look at me?” His voice is quiet and so uncommonly earnest. It makes Junhui gulp.

“I feel like… pink.” Jihoon’s eyebrows lower into a hard line, and Junhui figures he needs to do more explaining. “I feel right. I feel weird, too, like my stomach isn’t really there, but I feel whole. Or something.”

“Oh,” is all Jihoon says, and Junhui swallows hard again.

“My heart beats really fast,” he tells him. “It almost hurts.”

“Junhui,” Jihoon breathes warily.

“Jihoon, I think…” The words find him all too easily this time, connecting pieces of a puzzle all sitting right beside each other. “I think I love you.”

“Don’t say that,” he sighs, and just those three short syllables are enough to deflate Junhui’s chest, make the corners of his brain tint blue, vision go hazy. “You don’t love me.”

“How do you know?”

“I don’t know,” he admits, “but I don’t think you love me. I think you think you love me. Because I kind of helped you become normal. Maybe because you think I fixed you, and now you think you owe me, so you think you love me because you think that’s what I want you to do.” He looks like he’s got more to say, but he just holds his breath for a second before saying, “I need to go home.”

Junhui’s brain is all blue and nothing else when he says, “I’ll take you.” He’s barely seeing colors when he watches Jihoon’s feet slide across the floor until he’s at the door. His body won’t move even though he’s begging it.

“I’ll find my way,” Jihoon says, and when he closes the door behind him, Junhui feels like he’s taken a great deal more out with him than he came in with.

He’d thought before that what he was feeling was emptiness, that complete lack of anything inside, but empty means something new once you know what full is like, or half full, or quarter full, or just one drop. It’s impossibly hollower, nonsensically more fragile, and crushing despite its inherent weightlessness. He doesn’t understand why he feels so broken when he’s finally been fixed, how Jihoon could have so much influence after barely any time at all, how he should still be thrilled he’s able to feel anything in the first place but all that’s in him now is misery. There should be rules that feelings follow, but there don’t seem to be, and Junhui thinks he understands now why so many had called him lucky.

Mustering up the excitement he should have when he goes to visit his family is difficult, but he does it, even if it is just a painted shell around an empty core. He hopes against hope that his mother won’t notice his heart is elsewhere, and thankfully, she’s too amazed and grateful to pay any mind to unraveling his guise; his younger brother, however, is not so easily deceived. He strides purposefully into Junhui’s bedroom the night before he’s to return and crosses his arms strongly, legs in a wide stance that says he’s not going anywhere.

“What’s wrong?” he asks plainly, voice offering no avenue for escape.

“Nothing,” Junhui manages. “Why?”

“You’re lying,” his brother says, irritated. “Don’t think I can’t tell.”

“I’m not lying.”

“You _are_ ,” he whines. “You’re making the same face mom made when I knocked over the vase in the kitchen, when she was trying to act like she wasn’t sad about it breaking because she didn’t want me to feel bad. Tell me what’s wrong.”

“It’s nothing,” Junhui sighs, and that’s not an adequate answer.

“It’s not nothing if it’s making you sad. Just _tell_ me.”

“I…” He exhales hard. “Feeling isn’t what I thought it would be like. I thought I would know what I was feeling, but I don’t know anything. I’m confused.” His brother’s eyes are intent and piercing, commanding him to go on. It’s almost funny how he’s got such a way of seeing through everything when he’s still so young. “I thought I knew some things, but I was wrong.”

“Like what?”

“Like… I thought I knew what love felt like, but maybe I was making it up. Maybe I wasn’t right.”

“Do you love us? Me and mom and dad?” His voice is gentler but still firm, a slightly softened version of before. Junhui feels silly being all but scolded by a child.

“Of course I do,” Junhui says, “but it’s not like that. It’s different than what I feel when I see you and mom and dad.”

“Oh,” the boy replies quietly. “How is it different?”

“When I look at him,” Junhui begins, hesitating slightly when he makes an unintended confession and continuing when his brother doesn’t appear to notice or care, “I feel more whole. I feel more like me, and it doesn’t make any sense, but my heart beats faster and I feel like I’m seeing more colors. I don’t know.” He shrugs in frustration. “I don’t know what it is.”

“I don’t think you were wrong.”

“Huh?”

“I think maybe the person who told you that you were wrong,” and Junhui knows he hasn’t said anything about anyone telling him he was wrong, “maybe they were the one who was wrong.”

“You think so?”

“I do,” he confirms with an unusually sage nod. “I think you know what you feel just as much as everyone else does. You should tell them that.” Junhui doesn’t know what to say, and before he figures it out, his brother has walked back out of the room just as confidently as he walked into it. He hopes someday he might grow to be that certain as well.

When he heads home the next day, he takes the subway several stops past where he normally gets off, heart doing flips with each click of the car along the rails. It’s still a bright afternoon when he nears the stout brick building, and for the first time, he notices flowers on the vines which have so overtaken its corners, bright blue blossoms with white centers adorning every side. It’s a wonder how they got there in only the few days since Junhui’s been by, and it’s a wonder how they’re there at all, so lovely and fragile and untended in the crags of the stone. Their petals rustle in the breeze as Junhui strides by, and he takes one last look before ducking into the lobby. He offers the best smile he can manage to the woman who’s once again sweeping the lobby, and she smiles back at him with the slimmest sliver of confusion, waving him up the stairs nonetheless.

Junhui’s fist sounds unnecessarily heavy and insistent to his own ears as he raps it against the door, harsh and intrusive, and he thinks he might suffocate on the stale hallway air before Jihoon answers it. With each passing second, he grows more convinced Jihoon just might let him rot there in the hallway, never to free the words he needs him to hear, but Junhui’s not going to let him slip through his grasp so easily. He raises his hand to knock again, but the second his knuckles touch the wood, it gives way.

Jihoon’s eyes take a while to find Junhui’s face, and when they do, his lips shift from being parted neutrally in surprise to being pressed into a very hard and very unforgiving line. His eyes harden, too, just enough to make Junhui feel uncomfortable looking into them, but he keeps doing it because they’re still just as beautiful as they were the first time he saw them.

“Why are you here?” he asks less than nicely, shifting his weight between feet. His hair is slightly tousled; Junhui wishes he could extend a hand to fix it.

“I think you know why I’m here,” he asserts, and Jihoon’s face only stiffens further. “I need to talk to you. Can I come in?” For a moment, he hovers around the word _no_ , tongue lingering behind his teeth, but after a few tense breaths, he steps aside and gestures for Junhui to come in.

The room has more furniture in it now than before: a few new chairs, a barren bookshelf, a sofa, a small television set still trapped in a cardboard box. The recliner has been dragged over to sit beside the coffee table, twin trails through the carpet marking its path, and as Junhui’s eyes follow them, he’s inexplicably drawn to what he finds at the end.

Atop the sill of the open window, a potted plant stands proud and resolute, green splashed with small white flowers spilling out mesmerizingly over the edges of the holder and onto the sill, overflowing out the window and stirring with each faint gust of wind. If he knew he was right, he’d say they were the same kind of flowers from the restaurant; they look too uncannily similar to remind him of anything else. His chest fills with something that makes it easier to look at the reason he came here.

“Jihoon,” he begins more loudly than he intends, more assuredly than he thought he could. Jihoon starts a little at the sound of his name, but not enough to break him out of his frown. “I love you.”

“Junhui,” he groans.

“I mean it,” he insists. “And don’t tell me I don’t, because I know how I feel when I think about you. It’s different from when I think about my family or Soonyoung or those flowers. It’s so much more than all of those put together, and I think it must be love if my brain doesn’t know what else to call it. I don’t just think I love you, Jihoon. I know that I do.”

Jihoon’s bottom lip trembles, rupturing the line it had worked so hard to stay in, and he clenches his fists by his sides. “Do you even know what love is?” He tries to sound angry, but it fails when he falters on the final word, ending up somewhere lost and uncertain, eyebrows drooping.

“Maybe not. But I know I feel it about you.”

“How can you know that?” he asks, and he doesn’t even try this time to hide his confusion, apprehension, fear, anything. He wears it all on his face, raw and unaltered. “How could you love me?” he almost whispers, voice weak and strained. Junhui raises a hand to stroke his hair but freezes, fingertips ghosting beside the strands.

“I think you’re very beautiful, Jihoon,” he tells him. “I’ve told you that before, and I mean it even more now than I did then.” He lets his hand continue forward now, sliding over Jihoon’s hair and down to cup his cheek. “I think everything about you is beautiful, and I don’t just mean pretty. I want to hear everything you have to say until my ears stop working. I want to hold you until I can’t lift my arms anymore. And I don’t know why.” He cracks a smile, hand falling just a little bit more until it’s tracing Jihoon’s chin. “I don’t know why, but I know I want to.”

Jihoon brings a hand to rest over the one on his face, exhaling just a little bit when he feels its warmth. “I’m glad you came back,” he says. “I think I was hoping you would, and I’m glad you did. I think I might have loved you for a while.” His grip tightens a little, and Junhui’s so glad he can feel it. “I’m glad you are who you are, and for once, I’m happy I’m me.”

They stare at each other for a long time, words hanging on the air, and when Junhui leans down to press their lips together, they are whole. They are both whole and they were never broken to begin with, never flawed from the start. Junhui’s heart is trying to beat its way through his ribs and his face is on fire and now he knows just how right they had all been when they’d called him lucky for being born the way he was. Jihoon pulls back after a moment for a breath, eyes shining brightly, and Junhui thinks he is a star.

“Ouch,” he says, smiling, and Junhui quirks a brow.

“That didn’t hurt.” He’s smiling, too.

“No, it didn’t. Will you do it again?”

Junhui will do it again. Again and again and again until he can’t feel a thing.

**Author's Note:**

> AND THEN THEY BOTH WENT BACK TO THE WAY THEY WERE ORIGINALLY!!!!!!!!!!  
> just kidding obviously.......... notes aren't part of the story  
> anyway thank you so so sos o so so so so much for reading and i really truly genuinely hope you enjoyed. i had this idea so i wanted to write it, but i wasn't really sure how to class it ((if you think there's a tag i ought to add to make it make more sense, kick my ass about it in the comments)). either way, it's here, and all i can do is hope that you liked reading it as much as i want you to have liked reading it.  
> as always, feedback is greatly appreciated, and thank you once again for your time!!!


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